by Helen Rutter
In math, I see William Blakemore watching me. Just like I have my radar for bullies, he has his for victims and it’s gone off. When the bell rings for lunch, and everyone gets up to go, he spins around and blocks my path to the door.
“Wass your name again?” he says loudly. He knows. He’s figured it out. Time slows down. I’m in trouble. I can’t run and I can’t answer him. Some of the others are still packing up their things, and a couple of them are watching us. They know Blakemore is trouble too and are probably glad he hasn’t chosen to pick on them. I wait for as long as I can, and then, when I know that I HAVE to do something … I shrug.
I know, I know! Shrugging does not seem like a good option when someone has asked you your own name, but I have no choice! Just as he rises up even taller, clearly thrilled with his new find, I feel a hand on my shoulder accompanied by a loud, clear voice.
“His name is Billy Plimpton.” It’s Skyla! “Come on, Billy, let’s go.” She steers me out of the classroom and into the corridor before Blakemore can stop her. I’m about to turn and thank her when she skips off down the hall. I breathe a huge sigh of relief as I head towards the dining hall, but I know this is just the start. He knows my name now and I was rescued by a girl. This won’t go down well with someone like Blakemore. Hopefully if I can avoid him for the rest of the day he’ll find another victim and forget all about me.
I sit in the far corner of the dining hall on my own and eat my lunch as quickly as I can from behind my fake Dragon Quest stammer book. I don’t read a word of it but keep peeking over the top to see if I can see Blakemore. He either has so much bullying to do that he doesn’t have time to eat or I’ve somehow missed him.
After I have shoved in my lunch, I make a dash for it. Out in the hall it feels more dangerous than in the corner of the dining hall, and I instantly wish that I had stayed behind the safety of my book. There are kids everywhere, huge kids all in groups, playfully shoving each other around. I keep scanning the corridor in search of Blakemore, but with the laughing groups and tall bodies, I can’t keep an eye on all the doorways. I need to find a better lookout point, somewhere safer.
As I walk hurriedly past the theater, I realize I haven’t seen it yet. When we did a tour of the school last year, it was being rebuilt, so we weren’t allowed in. I peek through the little window in the door and can see the stage. No one is in there, so I look around and quietly sneak through the door. It feels huge and smells different from the rest of the school. I feel so much better immediately. It feels like a safe place.
The red curtains are just like the ones that the comedian on the TV at Granny Bread’s had, their huge velvet folds trimmed with gold. I push down a faded chair in the middle row, sit down, and stare up at the stage, imagining all the people who have performed there. Then I picture myself. Walking out into the middle of the stage confidently. Speaking clearly. Enjoying myself.
“My dad always says fight fire with fire,” the imaginary me says as he struts about the stage, microphone in hand, audience hanging on my every word. “That’s probably why he got thrown out of the fire brigade!” The audience love it—they roar with laughter, they love this version of me. I love this version of me. In my mind I keep going, “The other day I gave my best friend a massive rocket for his birthday, and do you know what? He was over the moon.”
I smile to myself, feeling my heart slow down and my shoulders relax. It’s so quiet. I close my eyes and breathe in the smell. I can almost feel the warmth of the imaginary audience, hear their applause. Then the bell rings and jolts me out of my daydream.
As I walk towards the door, back into the real world, I see Blakemore’s head pass by the window. I duck down, fast, praying he won’t see me. My heart is racing again. Shoulders tense. This isn’t how I imagined myself at Bannerdale. Hiding, scared, alone.
At home I don’t eat any dessert. It’s ice cream; Mom gives me a funny look when I shake my head and push my bowl away. She knows I love raspberry ripple. Even though I know that my dessert plan is going to work, I’m too busy thinking about Blakemore to concentrate.
In bed, I look at the clock and it’s midnight, but my mind is still whirring. When I eventually sleep I dream of Blakemore, pointing and laughing hard. Like he’s never going to stop. I’m doing the show-and-tell speech. Mr. Osho and the whole class are there too, all laughing so horribly at me. I wake up with a jolt.
What lies at the bottom of the ocean and shakes a lot?
A nervous wreck.
The good news is, I can put off seeing Blakemore for a few hours because I have to go to my monthly speech appointment with Sue in the morning. Mom and I drop Chloe off first, and it feels really strange seeing my old school. It looks so small! I feel like a totally different person now from when I went there.
Chloe is in second grade, and Mom still goes in and listens to her read in the mornings. I’m so glad I don’t have to go through that torture anymore. That was my worst nightmare. Reading out loud! Even in later grades, we used to have this lady come in and listen to us every Friday. She wore lots of scarves all twisted around each other and dangly earrings that pulled down her earlobes. Whenever I got stuck, she would say things like “Take a big breath in” and “Slow down.” Which, even though both of those things are supposed to help, only made it worse. It’s a bit like when Mom is stressed about being late or getting the house tidy for guests and Dad says, “Calm down.” She yells back, “Calm down! Instead of telling me to calm down you could help me, you patronizing twerp.” Calm down is clearly not a good thing to say to someone who is stressed, even though that’s exactly what they need to do! Human beings are weird.
When Mom gets back in the car, she says, “Right, let’s go, boyo,” and then she whispers, “Shall we stop at the café after?” I smile and nod as she starts the engine.
We always stop at the Tastebuds Café for cake after my speech appointments. Mom says it’s a bit “naughty,” but I think that makes the cake taste even better. Sometimes if it’s been a tricky session and I get stuck loads, she even buys me a hot chocolate.
After my first ever speech therapy session, my stutter disappeared for a week. Mom was so excited, I could tell. She thought it was a miracle. I kind of thought so too. Until it came back. That’s the really strange thing with stammers (or mine, at least)—it can totally disappear for a while and trick me into thinking everything’s fine. That I’m cured. Then—BAM—it’s back and it means business. It’s like the cruelest joke ever.
The worst thing is that it’s a little bit of me that’s playing the joke. My own brain is being so horrible to itself. I can’t blame anyone else. I sometimes get really cross with it, with that bit of my brain. I tell it off, “Stop it! S-s-stop it! I don’t want you to do this to me a-a-anymore!” Obviously I don’t say this out loud. But I imagine telling it off and sending it away.
I told Sue once, “It’s like I want to tell that bit of my brain to leave me alone.” She seemed a bit giddy then. She clapped her hands together and started looking for some paper. “What a wonderful idea!” She made me draw a picture of that bit of my brain, turn it into a character, and name it. I drew a little nasty old round creature with a stick. It was green and brown and had whiskers and a huge nose. I called it Bob. Then Sue drew a speech bubble and asked me what Bob would say. I wrote: You can’t get rid of me! I will never die.
I didn’t like looking at Bob after that. Sue made me imagine Bob packing a bag and me sending him away. I didn’t want to, though. I didn’t want to think about Bob anymore. That took up a whole session. I kept thinking afterwards, what were we meant to do in that session? Before I gave her the idea to draw Bob?
I sometimes think Sue has no idea how to get rid of my stutter. She always asks at the end of the session, “So do you want to come back again in a month?” I think sometimes she secretly hopes I’ll say no, because I only remind her that what she is doing isn’t working. That there is no cure. She’s said as much. I just have to find ways to “man
age” it. Well, I have found ways to manage it—tapping, whispering, or singing—but they aren’t always very useful.
Every time I go and see her, I secretly hope that she has found an amazing new cure, a single magical tablet that I can take. I’ll walk out of the room and never stutter again. I always close my eyes and make that wish just before we walk in the room. Mom catches me at it today.
“What on earth are you doing?” she asks as she sees me closing my eyes and whispering to myself.
“Making a w-w-wish,” I say.
“Of course you are! Come on, we’re late.” She bundles me in through the door.
When we see Sue today, there’s no tablet. She asks about school, and I try to pretend it’s all fine and repeat some of the things that Mom has been saying to her friends. “It’s a l-l-long day, but I have been getting the bus on t-t-t-time every morning, and I really like my homeroom teacher, Mr. Osho.” This looks like it’s done the trick. Mom’s smiling her big smile as though she has forgotten that she actually came up with these answers for me.
I’ve noticed this, that if you just repeat what an adult has said, they seem to love it. Sue asks about the other kids and I mention a few names, tell her that I sit next to Alex, and that Skyla from my old school is there. I don’t lie but I definitely don’t tell the truth either. I don’t mention the speech. I don’t want to ruin my chances of getting out of it, since I know that she will want me to do it. She is always saying how I should “take every opportunity to speak” that I can, because “you have so much to say, Billy. The world needs to hear what you have to say.”
When Sue seems happy that school is going okay, she, Mom, and I have to throw a ball in the shape of a hedgehog to each other and say words as we throw it. We spend twenty minutes naming items of clothing and trying to say them as slowly as we can. I get the giggles when Mom says bra. I start to feel a bit hysterical, as though I won’t ever be able to stop laughing. I wonder if that has ever happened to anyone. I know that someone couldn’t stop hiccupping for their whole life. That would be awful, wouldn’t it? But what if you got stuck laughing forever? It would probably make you sick and give you a tummy ache. Thinking about having a tummy ache does the trick and calms me down enough to keep going and say the word jacket as slowly as I can and then, when Mom can’t think of anything else, we stop and Sue tells me how well I have done.
Mom always comes to my appointments. Dad has been twice, but he’s normally working. The first time he came, I could see that he was getting too hot in the room and felt too big. He is six foot four and really doesn’t like small spaces. I think he’s pleased he doesn’t have to come. Mom sits in the corner and smiles through every session. I always think her face must hurt after an hour of smiling.
There’s one of those cool mirrors that people can watch you through, but you can’t see them. It has a curtain over it, and it was the first thing I ever asked Sue about. She always says that no one is watching us—“That’s why the curtain’s closed.”
I stop listening to her today, when she’s talking about Big Softie and the others. I imagine who could be on the other side of the mirror. Doctors with foreign accents, standing in long white coats, holding clipboards, and wearing glasses. I picture what they are saying about me: “This is Billy Plimpton. One of the most tragic cases we have ever seen.” Then I’m pulled back to the sound of Sue’s voice. “Billy, are you with me?” I nod and look at the sheet she’s holding up.
At the end of the session, the room has gotten so hot that Mom’s face has gone bright pink. We book another session in a month and then head for our cake. Just as it arrives, I remember my dessert plan and push it away, looking sad. Mom has an expression on her face like she knows I’m up to something. I just look away and cross my fingers under the table. Only five days until the dreaded show-and-tell speech.
What did one plate say to the other plate?
Dinner is on me.
In the whole first week, I manage to utter next to nothing. The teachers don’t seem to be picking on people to speak yet. I think it’s because they can’t remember our names. When I hand my book in at the end of geography, Mr. Grant says, “Thanks, Bobby.” I just smile and keep walking. It must be hard to remember everyone when they have so many classes to teach, especially kids who are doing their best to be invisible. Maybe I will be Bobby forever.
The cough/whisper technique is getting slicker, although I did notice Skyla looking up from her drawing at me today in morning homeroom with a funny look on her face. She is the only one who knows the real me—the truth. I went red when I saw her and avoided her eyes.
At lunch, I see her walking over to my table with her tray.
“Hi, Billy,” she says.
I panic, do an awkward kind of half wave, and pretend that I’ve already finished, even though my plate is still full of pizza and I haven’t even touched my cookie. I get up so quickly that I knock my chair over and the noise of it hitting the floor echoes around the hall. People are looking, so I just run out without picking it up. My heart’s racing and my ears are hot.
I don’t want to talk to her in case other people hear me. I know that she helped me with Blakemore, but I don’t need her. I don’t need anyone. I just need to stay quiet until I have gotten rid of this stutter, however long it takes. As I’m running away from her, I don’t let myself think about the fact that maybe Skyla needs me. She sits on her own in every single class, and I haven’t seen her chatting to any of the other girls in our class. She’s nearly as silent as me. Skyla’s tough, though. I mean, she punched Jack Rouse in the face! She’s fine on her own, surely?
I just keep my head down, shut out any thoughts, and keep walking. I feel my empty tummy rumble. I can talk to Skyla when I’ve made my way through my list and found a cure. I’m still on the hunt for the tea but no luck yet. We are going to the supermarket this weekend, so fingers crossed they have it there.
For the rest of lunch, I just wander around. If you keep moving, no one seems to notice that you are on your own and not speaking to anyone. I am wondering if maybe this will go on forever; maybe no one will ever ask me to speak. Do I want to stay like this forever? It’s a bit boring. Fingers crossed something from the list will start working soon and then I can start talking again. I bet Mom wouldn’t believe me if I told her I haven’t spoken in a week. She calls me a nonstop chatterbox, but that’s at home. Home’s so different from school. Safe.
There are good things and bad things about being a silent student. I get to notice loads of stuff that other people wouldn’t. Like at lunchtime I can watch people carefully choosing where to sit, who it’s acceptable to be next to. Today, before Skyla sent me running, I saw Yasmin from our class deciding what food to eat. When she went towards the eggplant, another girl made a face like eggplant’s disgusting and so Yasmin had pasta instead. Then I scanned across the tables, full of people chatting and trying to be the best versions of themselves. Swinging their hair over their shoulders or waving their arms around as they spoke. I saw a few kids like me, alone, just watching. I wouldn’t have noticed all this if I’d been one of a group, waiting for my turn to speak. That’s what everyone seems to be doing all the time, not listening to each other, just waiting until they can say something.
The downside of my silence is that it can get me into trouble. This afternoon I get lost on my way to English, and instead of doing what any normal kid would do and asking someone for directions, I just keep wandering around. When I eventually find the room, the teacher’s very cross.
“Come on. For goodness’ sake, you should know your way around by now!” I try my best to apologize by widening my eyes and shrugging, but it just seems to make her more angry: “Sit down!” she barks.
I think maybe she’s always in a bad mood; she has a sad mouth and squinty eyes for the whole lesson.
* * *
I’ve managed to get through the rest of the week without bumping into William Blakemore outside of class. On Wednesday, I have to
run into a science lab at break time when I see him coming towards me in the corridor. A teacher in a white lab coat looks worried as I rush into the room.
“Are you okay, young man?” he asks, looking at me over his glasses.
I panic at the idea of answering him and try to look lost by getting my schedule out and pointing at it. I use it to cover my face as I head back out into the corridor. I feel like I’m in an old silent movie, in grainy black and white, with over-the-top expressions and exaggerated movements. As I turn the schedule the right way around and pretend to find the direction I need to go in, I almost jump and click my heels together, like they do in old films. The idea makes me smile. I don’t do it, though.
The next day in English, I know that Blakemore’s watching me again, waiting for his moment to strike, so as soon as the bell rings, I run. I sometimes hear him before I see him. Shouting things at people in the halls or singing loudly, like he wants everyone to know where he is. Then I run too, run away from the voice, and hide. I can’t believe I’ve managed to avoid him for the whole week. It’s not exactly what I want out of middle school, to be constantly running away from someone, but it won’t be forever.
After the bell finally goes at the end of the day, I head out of the gates and onto the bus. As I slump into my usual seat in the middle, I breathe a sigh of relief. The weekend at last. I am exhausted. It’s hard work being alone, silent, and avoiding someone. Especially someone you are terrified of.
When I get home, Mom wants to go and celebrate the end of my first week at Bannerdale. We leave Dad and Chloe at home, and she takes me to a new diner in town called Uncle Sam’s. We are sitting in a booth with green leather seats and a mini jukebox that holds the ketchup, when a girl with red lipstick and braces on her teeth comes to take our order.